This month, Feb2013, the cover disk contains mint and the feature article is also about the mint box.

I have a mint box pro, and have tried before to use the Linux Format cover disks,

My problem is this. The mint box does not have a cd/dvd drive, so I plug in an external USB drive, pop the cover disk in and reboot.

As expected it boots into the LFX cover disk menu, (so the usb and 'boot from' is enabled) but at that point neither my USB Mouse or USB Keyboard are working, so I can't select or try any distro. ;-(

On past boxes running ubuntu I had had the same problem, eg unable to use a USB keyboard to make selections at the grub boot menu. I used to solve that one by temporarily plugging in a PS2 keyboard, but the mint box has no PS2..

I've tried booting several of your cover disks, and others from Linux pro magazine, and find the same problem with them all.

Any thoughts as to why the usb ports recognise the cd drive but not the keyboard at that point in a boot sequence?